


I Want All the Rain

by especiallythezefronposter



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alive Noah, Amnesia, Angst, Car Conversations, Excessive Drinking, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Lovers to Strangers to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Minor Noah Czerny/Barrington Whelk, Pining, Ronan Lynch is Bad at Feelings, Ronan-centric, Slow Burn, but he does remember whelk and makes out with him in front of ronan, kind of, lots of them - Freeform, noah comes back to life and doesn't remember his friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 16:33:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15441162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/especiallythezefronposter/pseuds/especiallythezefronposter
Summary: Ronan, Adam and Persephone figure out a way to bring Noah back to life. Everything goes according to plan, except the part where Noah doesn't remember his death, or any of the people he met after.





	I Want All the Rain

**Author's Note:**

> I finished TRC a couple weeks after the last book came out, which has been while, long enough that I don’t remember TRC in as much detail as I should to write this fic. Despite that, I didn’t reread TRC to write this, and so this doesn’t follow canon exactly. No one is even talking about Glendower and some canon stuff has happened and other stuff has not and it generally doesn’t follow the storyline. I used something like the General Idea of the books, but I swear it’s not going to be as confusing as I’m making it sound right now. 
> 
> What I’m trying to say is that this doesn’t follow canon all that closely, so pay no mind to small inaccuracies and maybe yell at me in the comments about big inaccuracies if you want. 
> 
> I really, really loved writing this story and I’m sort of surprised at how long it got and how much I love the result. I hope you love it, too, and I’d greatly appreciate comments and kudos, ‘cause I’m a whore for positive feedback (and feedback in general, again, yelling at me about inaccuracies is entirely welcome, too). Enjoy!

Ronan dreams the Mustang for Noah.

The first thing he does when he wakes up is check if the engine is there. It is. When he turns the key in the ignition, the car starts. There’s band stickers on the dashboard and a CD in the CD player and a dirty shoe underneath the passenger seat. Ronan is surprised about that. He hadn’t known it was there. He finds other stuff like this, things that belong in the car although Ronan would never have thought to dream them. There’s a flat tire where the spare tire should be, expired condoms in the side of the driver’s door, a bunch of West Virginia road maps and a napkin with a phone number on it in the passenger side door, the ugliest pair of sunglasses Ronan has ever seen next to it.

He sort of wants to drive the Mustang out to Kavinsky’s lot and ask him to burn it, wants the car to stay as a memory in hopes that Noah does, too, that nothing has to change. 

But this, the pair of clean socks tucked under the backseat, the screwdriver and loose skateboard wheel in the trunk, even the initials carved into the left-side back door, NC and BW… Noah was so alive, was changing his socks after swim practice and singing along to shitty music and changing a tire on the side of some Henrietta road. He should be able to have that back, to hold on to the wheel of a car without his hand falling through it, to swim and run and sing, to mess around with someone in the backseat of his car.

The thing is that Ronan doesn’t think Noah and him are going to get along as well when Noah is alive, when there’s no excuse of drawing energy from Ronan while he sleeps, or only being able to sleep with Noah’s cold wrapped around him in the summer for them to be close anymore, when Noah has actual options, doesn’t have just Ronan to hang out with because Ronan is the only one who even knows he still exists. He’ll be able to meet other people, to live somewhere else, to not spend all of his time with a depressing loser like Ronan. Ronan should be happy about that. It should be a reason to do this, instead of a reason to boycott the entire thing.

He pulls out his phone, the text conversation between Adam and him the first thing that pops up when he unlocks it. Adam called him, because that’s easier, but after, he sent a text listing all the things Ronan should remember.

It’s not a lot. His biggest responsibility is dreaming up a body for Noah, which, shit. He’s not even going to need to boycott this. He dreamt up Matthew, but he barely even remembers how. Doing it again seems impossible. 

So he sits in the car for the rest of the night, running his thumb over the worn edges of the stickers on the dashboard, trying to prepare himself for losing his best friend.

-

Noah is enthusiastic about his impending revival, overcompensating in an attempt to hide his nerves. He spends more and more time in Ronan’s dreams, making sure the body he dreams up for him will turn out alright.

‘Don’t forget I also have hair on the back of my head. And fingernails. And toenails, too, and my navel. I also need a brain, working eyes and ears, and taste buds, I’ve really missed being able to taste things. Arm hair, leg hair, I had a happy trail, but it wasn’t very pronounced.’ He crouches down next to his body, which Ronan tries to adjust as Noah speaks.

‘Ronan! You forgot my dick!’ Noah sounds scandalised as he lifts the waistband of his jeans. ‘If you gave me this body I would kill myself.’

‘Don’t be ungrateful. You can piss out of your asshole.’

‘I’m sure that’s going to work great with the ladies.’

‘Shut the fuck up,’ Ronan mumbles. ‘Let me work. Your whole checklist is messing things up. If I think of you as a whole, instead of as all these complicated parts, you’ll turn out fine.’

‘I better. If you mess up, I’m gonna haunt you, which is gonna be so much easier to do when I’m alive.’

‘Shut up,’ Ronan mumbles, getting back to work.

When he wakes up, Noah is wrapped around him, face pressed to the side of Ronan’s.

-

He only shows Noah the Mustang the day before the ritual. He hasn’t had much time for Noah, spending his nights practicing and his days talking over the entire thing with Adam and Persephone. He’s exhausted, but Noah’s excitement when he sees the car gives him a burst of energy.

Noah is more opaque than usual, practically bouncing around the car to see every detail of it.

He emphatically checks if the engine is there, the little shit, then gets in the driver’s seat. Ronan takes the passenger seat, suddenly nervous. There’s nothing to be nervous about. Noah loves the car, just as Ronan expected. If everything goes well tomorrow, Noah is gonna be driving it in no time. He’s gonna be able to have his own life, new friends, a new place to live. 

That’s what’s going to hurt most, that these were his last fucking days with Noah and Ronan has barely spent any time with him.

‘Hey,’ Noah says. ‘You’re thinking a lot.’ He doesn’t follow it up with a joke, just grabs Ronan’s shoulders and pulls him closer.

Ronan lets him, allowing Noah to wrap his arms around him like an idiot. It’s not the most comfortable position, but Noah is running his hand over Ronan’s scalp, humming a song Ronan doesn’t recognise, and Ronan figures he can indulge Noah for a moment.

Then Noah reaches over his shoulder and music starts blaring from the car radio. Ronan jumps, cheeks burning and Noah pumps his fist victoriously. ‘You got the CD right and everything!’

Noah sings along, not caring that he sucks at singing and drums along with the rhythm on his steering wheel. He looks at Ronan in a way that makes Ronan’s brain go really quiet and he hates it, because he wants Noah to look at him like that forever and he knows that Noah won’t.

Ronan leans in, a little too fast, a little too far and his face collides with Noah’s. It’s not very pleasant at first because Ronan has no idea what he’s doing and Noah is too surprised to react. Then he kisses Ronan back and it feels perfect. Noah must have done this before. A lot. Because it doesn’t feel weird like that time Ronan kissed a girl at one of Kavinsky’s substance parties. It feels just right.

They let go of each other and then they kiss some more. Noah is smiling and then he is laughing and Ronan pushes him away, scowling, clenching his hands into fists so Noah won’t see they’re shaking.

‘That was great,’ Noah says, still smiling. ‘Come on.’ He pulls Ronan back in and this time he doesn’t laugh, just holds on to Ronan’s neck with one hand, which feels cold against Ronan’s feverishly hot skin. When they pull apart, Noah is looking at Ronan in a way Ronan doesn’t understand, but doesn’t want to understand, either.

‘What’s the first thing you’re going to do when you’re alive again?’, Ronan asks, just to get Noah to look away, if only for a second. He doesn’t, but his gaze gets less intense. For a second, Ronan worries his answer is going to be ‘abandon you’.

But Noah smiles that dumb smug smile he does when he’s making fun of Ronan. ‘Check if you forgot my dick. Then have gelato. Then jerk off.’

‘In the gelato shop?’

‘Don’t be gross! Maybe I’d wait with jerking off. I forgot what it feels like. Probably overhyped it in my head. I wanna go swimming, though, and go to a party and get high. And I want pizza and you have to learn how to cook Polish food because I wanna eat every dish my parents ever used to make. And I want to sleep. Lots of sleeping. Maybe I overhyped that, too, but I really want to sleep. I want to drink a cup of coffee and then take a twenty minute nap, those were the best. But mostly the swimming.’

They’re quiet for a moment, both imagining Noah swimming.

‘And I’d make out with you some more, if you want.’

Ronan takes a deep shuddering breath. He can’t imagine life without Noah. He doesn’t want to. But if this really is his last day with him, saying mushy shit isn’t as mortifying as it would normally be.

‘Yeah,’ he says and Noah’s face does something weird, something involving his eyebrows drawing together and his eyes going soft that makes Ronan’s stomach flip. ‘I’d want that,’ he whispers.

He doesn’t think anything is ever going to make him feel as happy and as sad at the same time as kissing Noah for the last time.

-

For the amount of preparation the ritual took, it goes by very fast. Not even half an hour after Adam started to set everything up, Ronan wakes up, paralysed.

As soon as he can, he reaches out beside him, to where he knows Noah is. His hand closes around a warm wrist, a strong pulse underneath. Noah tugs his wrist out of Ronan’s grip and gets up while Ronan manages a sitting position. He’s exhausted, but it worked, Noah is alive. Nothing else matters.

Noah looks around for a moment. ‘Do any of you happen to know what time it is?’ He’s still wearing his Aglionby uniform. It looks strange on him now that it’s completely opaque, the colour too dark against his skin, which is still pale. His voice sounds different. Louder, more solid.

Gansey is the first to recover. He glances at his watch. ‘It’s nearly nine,’ he says.

‘Shit,’ Noah mutters. ‘Thanks.’ He glances around himself again, frowning. ‘Has anyone seen my skateboard?’

Blue’s voice sounds a little shaky when she speaks. ‘You didn’t have a skateboard with you, Noah.’

‘What’s going on anyway?’, he asks. ‘Last time I remember I was here with Barry, now he’s not here and you guys are.’

‘Are you saying you don’t remember what happened?’ That’s Adam, his voice soft.

‘Nope. Barry wanted to do this weird ritual thing, but it didn’t work. Then –‘ There’s a faint blush crawling up Noah’s neck. Ronan realises this is the first time he has seen him blush at all. ‘That’s the last thing I remember. But I recognise you guys from school. You’re seniors, too, right? Adam, Gansey, Ronan. Sadly, I don’t know your undoubtedly beautiful name.’

Blue swallows thickly. ‘Blue.’

‘That name really suits you, Blue. I’m going to leave, now, though. I’m probably late somewhere. It’s Sunday, right?’

‘Saturday,’ Ronan blurts out, finally getting up. ‘And I’ll drive you.’

‘It’s fine, I can walk.’

‘I insist,’ Ronan says. His lungs feel empty. He can’t breathe, can’t make sense of this. Noah is alive. Noah doesn’t remember them. Ronan must have screwed up, must have forgotten something in the body’s brain that would have made Noah remember them.

‘I’ll come with,’ Blue says quietly. Her eyes are big and sad, her hands trembling. ‘You guys should talk to Persephone,’ she tells Adam and Gansey.

Noah follows Ronan and Blue to the BMW. Blue gets into the backseat, but leans in between the front seats when Ronan takes his seat behind the wheel. ‘This is gonna be okay,’ she says quietly.

He gives her a sneer. ‘Of course it isn’t,’ he says. It’s almost comfortable to go back to being angry. It’s so much easier than fear or hurt or shame.

Noah gets into the car. ‘Could you drive me to Whelk’s? He normally tutors me on Saturdays.’

‘Not a big fan of Whelk,’ Ronan says as he starts the car and manoeuvres out of the forest.

‘I don’t think anyone is, he’s a total ass,’ Noah says easily, smiling. ‘He’s a good tutor, though.’

Ronan doesn’t answer. He’s focused on the road, trying to count to ten but never actually getting there. His hands are so tight around the steering wheel that his knuckles are almost white.

‘Gansey’s on the rowing team, right?’, Noah asks into the silence.

Ronan doesn’t react. He thinks if he opens his mouth he’ll just scream. He wishes he could wake up, but he knows he isn’t dreaming. Noah is never this stupid in his dreams.

‘I didn’t know that,’ Blue says when it’s quiet for too long. ‘But that sounds like him. Adam told me you used to be on the activities committee.’

‘Still am! We’re doing this interactive installation sort of thing for Raven day. You go to Mountain View High, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘That’s so great! We’re trying to organise this dance with both schools, but the Dean - ‘

‘Aren’t you wondering why you just woke up in the middle of a forest with a scar on your face?’, Ronan blurts out. Blue smacks his arm, but Ronan ignores her.

Noah frowns, reaching up to cover his cheek self-consciously. The scar is strange, so different from the smudge he had before. It’s straight and surgical, with the small lines of stitches cleanly cutting across it. ‘That’s not what happened.’

‘Then what did happen?’

‘I was exploring the forest, got lost, walked into you guys. And the scar isn’t exactly anyone’s business.’

‘That’s not what I remember.’

‘Ronan,’ Blue admonishes. Then to Noah. ‘I’m sorry, he’s just really tense because of school and stuff.’ She takes out her phone, probably to text Adam about Noah’s changing recollection.

‘Tell me about it! It’s like you’re supposed to fit a month’s worth of work into a week, every week.’

They keep talking about school and college applications and dumb shit like that until Ronan screeches to a halt in front of Whelk’s house.

Noah is cheerful as he thanks Ronan and says goodbye to Blue. It’s so fucking like him to still be nice to Ronan after Ronan was rude to him.

Ronan had been preparing himself for this, for losing Noah, but now that it’s happening, now that Noah is slamming shut the car door and walking away, Ronan feels like his lungs are going to explode.

He has already pulled into the empty street when Whelk opens the door for Noah. He’s going slowly, watching Whelk’s disbelieving expression in the rear-view mirror. He reaches up to touch Noah’s face and Ronan has to brake again because Noah leans in to kiss Whelk. He fucking kisses him and Whelk kisses him back and Ronan wants to drag Noah into the car and keep him in Monmouth until he’s sane again because this can’t be happening.

Blue is turned around in her seat, looking at them, too. When she turns back to Ronan, there are tears in her eyes.

Ronan drives to 300 Fox Way and stays in the car while Blue gets out. ‘You aren’t coming?’, she asks.

‘Gansey is gonna try and find some silver lining to this and I’m going to hate him for it and leave. Might as well skip the dramatics and get straight to the leaving part.’

Blue nods.

Ronan doesn’t drive to Monmouth but to Kavinsky’s house, because at Monmouth there’s the Mustang and Noah’s empty room. Kavinsky is hungover and it’s only eleven am, but he’s perfectly willing to get drunk despite that. Ronan refuses any of the other stuff he offers, forged pills and weed, just keeps sipping vodka like it’s water.

-

He’s too hungover to go to school two days later.

After school, Gansey knocks on Ronan’s door and Ronan tells him to fuck off.

‘Just wanted to let you know that there’s no record of Noah’s death. He’s a registered student, a year older than us. He lives with his parents, his sisters are still the same age as they were when he was dead. Nothing has changed, except that there’s a place for him in the world of the living, now. The only people who remember his death are those who knew him while he was a ghost.’

‘So he went to Whelk,’ Ronan says. He’d thought about that before, about how easy it would be for Noah to just go over to his house. He never asked and he’s sure Noah never would have admitted it.

‘What?’, Gansey says.

‘Whelk remembers him. Didn’t Blue tell you about that?’

Gansey reluctantly opens the door, ready to dodge a sock or a bottle or a book. Ronan doesn’t throw anything.

‘She told us he kissed Whelk. Not that Whelk remembered him.’

‘Before Noah kissed him, Whelk looked scared out of his mind.’

‘Adam’s theory is that Cabeswater did this. Maybe it made Whelk remember as some kind of revenge?’

‘Or Noah is as weak and cowardly as we know he is and actually went back to Whelk while he was a ghost.’ Ronan kicks at an empty bottle on the floor, hating that it doesn’t shatter. He should have thrown Noah out of the window more often.

‘We, um, yesterday we decided that we’re going to leave things as they are. We could try to figure out a way to get his memories back or something but this is… this is nicer, right? He gets a second chance at life, without being dragged down by bad memories.’

‘You mean that we’re not going to tell him that his gross boyfriend bludgeoned him to death with a skateboard.’ It’s not a question. Of course Gansey wants to do whatever seems _fair_ and _right_ , of course Blue and Adam went along with it.

Gansey studies the floor. ‘Ronan, he’s happy. You can still be friends with him, you just have to get to know him again.’

‘This isn’t about me. This is about Noah making out with a guy who murdered him.’

‘There’s no way to tell him that would make any sense. He doesn’t know us, Ronan. He’s not going to believe us if we tell him he died and his boyfriend was the one who killed him.’

‘His _boyfriend killed him_ , Gansey!’

‘Look, the whole reason we did this was to make Noah happy, okay. We did this because _you_ told us that every now and then he would remember how he died and he wouldn’t stop re-enacting it. Well, now he’s stopped. So tell him about it if you really want to, but just remember that if you scare him away, there’s no getting him back.’

Ronan does throw a bottle, then, but it bounces off the door that has already closed behind Gansey.

-

Ronan is on his way to the parking lot after school on Tuesday when he sees Noah a few yards in front of him, hair wet after swim practice, out of his uniform and in a pair of pink joggings and a blue hoodie, since swim practice is his last period of the day and there would be no point in changing back into his uniform just to head home. 

Ronan still feels sick at the thought of Noah not remembering them, not remembering Whelk killing him, but he falls into step beside him.

‘Hey,’ he says and Noah gives him a grin.

‘Ronan,’ he greets him, and his voice is still weird to hear, both the stronger sound of it and the tone, confident and content.

Ronan had thought it would be hard to see Noah at school, that he’d want to yell ‘Hey loser!’ at him across the hallway and rub his knuckles over his head like he used to, that he’d forget they weren’t friends. But Noah is so different, so opaque and alive and magnetic, that it’s much harder than Ronan expected to even reconcile him with the ghost Ronan liked so much.

‘I’m sorry about how I acted in the car yesterday. I was being rude.’

‘Oh, no problem. Thanks again for the ride.’

‘Any time. Oh, and Whelk, really?’ It’s so easy to tease Noah, even about something as disgusting as what he’s teasing him for, dating a guy who would kill him for the slightest chance at some power.

Noah looks slightly panicked.

‘I’m not gonna tell anyone,’ Ronan assures him. He has an idea, half formed in his head. He licks his lips and gives Noah a half smile, the kind he uses to flirt with girls at Kavinsky’s parties, right where Kavinsky can see him. It’s way easier with Noah, who blushes just from that. ‘I’m just surprised, is all,’ Ronan drawls. ‘Someone as pretty as you can do better, right?’

He doesn’t wait for Noah to say something, just walks off to his car and drives away, feeling an angry kind of satisfaction now that he knows what to do to make this right.

-

Ronan drinks more. When he’s asleep he keeps dreaming of Noah, when he’s awake, he keeps thinking of him. Being drunk doesn’t really help, but at least it makes him feel like he’s trying to do something about it. He goes to school, although he blows off as many classes as he can get away with. 

He avoids Adam, which is easy, since after Ronan telling him to fuck off twice, he actually does fuck off. Gansey is harder to get rid of, but Ronan just stops reacting to everything he says, and although Gansey hovers around him with a sad look on his face whenever he can, he doesn’t try to talk to Ronan as much anymore.

He’d figured Blue wouldn’t be a problem at all, since he only sees her when he hangs out with Adam and Gansey, and he doesn’t hang out with Adam and Gansey anymore, but then she turns up at Monmouth out of nowhere.

Ronan is in the Mustang. It’s a nice place to drink and wallow, since Gansey leaves him alone, here. Gansey told him to park it behind the building, on the off chance that Noah would drive past Monmouth and wonder why there was an exact replica of his old car parked in the front.

Somehow, the abundance of nettles and rusty chunks of metal doesn’t stop Blue from making her way around the building. Ronan, the dumbass, didn’t lock the doors and before he can, she sits down in the passenger seat, looking around the car in awe. It’s past sundown and none of the lights inside the car actually work, so they sit there in the dark, Blue leaning towards the dashboard and studying the stickers there. She doesn’t even look at Ronan.

‘Leave,’ he says. He uses his scary angry voice and everything, but Blue just looks at him and gives him a cheerful smile.

‘I told my mom I’d be home at midnight, so I’m actually only leaving in –‘ she looks at her watch. ‘Two hours.’

He takes a swig of his whiskey. ‘And what exactly are you going to be doing in those two hours?’

‘Talking to you, of course.’

‘Good luck with that.’

‘I went to see Noah today. He’s teaching me Polish and I’m teaching him how to read tarot cards in return.’

Ronan doesn’t react. He takes another swig of his bottle.

‘We talked about you.’ She leaves another pause for him to react, but when he doesn’t, she seemingly gives up and gets started on her monologue. ‘He thinks you’re cool - which, how? – and he doesn’t seem intimidated by you, so clearly he hasn’t changed any since coming back to life. Then I tried to talk to him about Whelk and he really seems like he’s in love with him, even though he keeps talking about how much of an asshole he is. I think calling him asshole is more of an affectionate thing. I tried to figure out if Whelk maybe isn’t always as good to him, but he said Whelk isn’t like, abusive or anything. That’s obviously a lie. Noah never outright said it but the way he talked about Whelk… I’m pretty sure he was at least a little abusive. But, anyway, he’s so adorable when he talks about Whelk. That has changed. He always used to have this sadness to him, but now he’s just cheerful and sweet and happy.’

Ronan wants to make fun of how she sounds like she’s in love with Noah, but he’s so surprisingly annoyed about it that he can’t think of anything mean to say.

‘But I was going somewhere with this. Noah seems like he’s really into Whelk and everything, but I’m sure there’s stuff Whelk does that Noah doesn’t like, so it not like there’s no way to separate them. So that’s what we need to do, if we can’t tell him. We need them to break up.’

Ronan takes another drink. ‘I already have a plan,’ he says then, feeling his cheeks grow warm from something other than the alcohol.

‘You do?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What is it?’

‘I’m gonna flirt with him until he dumps Whelk.’ It sounds really, really dumb when he says it out loud, but he’s drunk enough not to care.

‘For you?’

Ronan shrugs. ‘Just until he dumps him. It doesn’t have to be for anybody.’

‘But it’d be a plus if he dumped him for you, right?’

Ronan ignores her and takes another swig from his bottle, looking out of the window at the darkness beyond.

‘Okay, okay. It’s a good plan. I like it. Are you any good at flirting with guys, though?’

‘It’s _Noah_. He can’t be hard to flirt with. He fell for Whelk for fuck’s sake.’

Blue is grinning, Ronan doesn’t know why.

‘Are your two hours almost up?’

She keeps fucking grinning. ‘No.’ She’s quiet for a moment, turning serious. ‘How are you doing, though? You’ve basically lost your best friend.’ He sort of wants her to go back to that stupid grin. Now she just looks like she pities him.

He raises his bottle to his lips. ‘I’m doing great.’

‘Are you gonna go to sleep after I leave?’

‘Of course not.’

She sighs. ‘Did Noah used to sleep in your bed with you?’

He ignores her.

‘I always sort of wondered, with you two. ‘Cause you know, you were really close to him and you were different to him, like, both meaner and way sweeter. I thought that’s why things didn’t work out between you and Adam.’

She leaves a pause for him to react, but he doesn’t. 

‘And Noah kissed me once, but I don’t think he wanted to be kissing me, specifically.’

That’s another fact Ronan finds surprisingly irritating. He takes another drink. When he lowers his bottle, Blue takes it from him, screws it shut and puts it at her feet.

‘But you weren’t – you weren’t like that? I feel like if you were, someone should know. That’s too fucked up to deal with on your own.’

Ronan thinks of Noah wrapped around him in bed, making fun of him in the sun outside Monmouth, talking him out of bad ideas in the BMW. He thinks of Noah in church with him, kissing Noah in the Mustang, trying to make something impermanent last forever. He shakes his head at her. ‘We weren’t like that.’

She opens the car door. ‘This is a second chance for you, okay? In case there’s a first one you missed.’ The door closes quietly and he watches her disappear in the darkness.

-

Adam isn’t talking to Ronan anymore, which Ronan is okay with. He doesn’t fucking care.

It should be sad, how easily Adam removes himself from Ronan’s life after Ronan snaps at him one too many times. Ronan doesn’t see him anywhere anymore, except in class, but even there Adam avoids him so easily that Ronan barely realises he’s there.

Noah is the exact opposite. He’s everywhere, yelling greetings at Ronan in the hallway, sneaking into Whelk’s classroom during a free period, promoting some dumb Mountain View theatre show that stars two Aglionby kids over lunch, hanging out with his activities committee friends, smoking with Jiang and Swan.

That’s the thing about Noah that surprises Ronan most, although it really shouldn’t. He’s friends with a lot of people, in fact, pretty much the entire school is his friend, but the people he spends the most time with are Skov, Swan and Jiang. Ronan never actually sees him talking to Kavinsky and he only spends time with Proko when at least one of the others is there, never alone.

Whelk is very different from Kavinsky’s pack, but essentially they can offer Noah the same thing: something to distract him, to keep him busy, without wanting anything in return, without giving him anything he’d feel like he doesn’t deserve.

He goes to substance parties, gets high on weed but doesn’t drink, doesn’t take any of the forged drugs Skov, Swan and Jiang take.

There’s so many new things to learn about Noah now that he’s alive, now that his body is capable of change. He somehow looks good even when his eyes are bloodshot; once he’s high, his hair gets crazier as the night goes on and he doesn’t do anything to stop it; when he stays up too late and comes to school the next day, he almost looks the way he did when he was a ghost.

Noah and him don’t talk as much as he would want to, but he’s not pathetic enough to come up with some excuse to be around him like Blue did. Ronan just sticks to giving him flirty (just thinking the word is embarrassing) smiles in the hallway, savouring the way Noah stutters halfway through his greeting and blushes. They have one class together, and sometimes make small talk while they wait for it to start. This is when Noah invites him to some dumb activities committee thing. Ronan tells him he’ll try to come, already sure that he’s not going to attend a screening of some dumb movie at school after hours. 

-

He doesn’t know why he tells Blue about Noah inviting him to the movie. She’s come over again, clutching a cup of mint tea Gansey made her and sitting on Noah’s bed. Ronan is in Noah’s desk chair, already regretting that he didn’t lock himself into his room as soon as he heard Gansey open the door for her.

It’s too late now. She’s grinning at him like anything having to do with Noah is worth grinning over. ‘You have to go!’

‘I’m not gonna watch some lame movie.’

‘Neither is Whelk. And when Noah breaks up with him because he wants to be with someone who actually cares about his interests, the first person you want him to think of is you, right?’

‘I just want them to break up.’

‘So that Noah can be with you.’

‘So that he isn’t with fucking Whelk.’

She raises her hands in a _you win_ gesture, which is worrying. Blue would never let him have the last word, but since Noah has come back to life, she’s been letting him off the hook for his bullshit more and more often.

-

He goes to the fucking screening. The film is called The Room and once one of the people organising the screening explains a bit of the backstory behind it, the reason why it’s a cult classic, it’s still lame, but at least it’s meant to be lame.

They’re in the dusty attic with a mismatched assortment of chairs, a projector from the very early 2000’s and a white sheet as a screen. 

The people who turned up are as mismatched as the chairs, although what all of them except Noah and Jiang have in common is that Ronan never talks to them. He knows some of them from Gansey and some of them from substance parties, but he only remembers one or two names.

Noah sits down beside him when the movie is about to begin. ‘I hadn’t expected you to come,’ he says in that genuine way he says everything.

Ronan drags his hand across his scalp, eyes still on Noah when the lights go out and the screen casts everything in a pale glow, making Noah look ghostly. He really fucking misses Noah. He misses having someone who knew him so well but never tried to change him the way Gansey and Adam do. He misses waking up to a cold body in his bed, misses holding Noah down so he’d stop imitating his death, misses having someone talk him out of his dumbest, drunkest ideas. Somehow it hadn’t hit him this hard before, but he really fucking misses everything about Noah.

Before he can stop himself or think better of it, he says, ‘Well even if the movie sucks, at least I got to see you, right?’

Everyone around them laughs and Ronan turns back to the screen, cheeks hot. Noah doesn’t say anything in return, but keeps glancing at Ronan throughout the whole film.

-

Adam still isn’t talking to him, which makes sense, since Ronan hasn’t done anything to make up for his recent behaviour, but it’s starting to bother him. He likes having Adam around, his hard-won smiles and level-headedness, the way he’s call Ronan out on how dramatic he’s being.

Blue comes over again and tells Ronan he misses Adam. He hadn’t really thought of it like that, but it’s the best way to describe it. 

She prods him until he agrees to go to Nino’s with Gansey and her. 

Once there, it turns out that Adam is invited, too, and that he was under the impression that only Blue and Gansey would be there. Ronan isn’t surprised at all when Gansey and Blue come up with an excuse to leave before they’re even inside, leaving him and Adam to eat on their own.

‘I’m sorry – about being an ass,’ Ronan says once they’re seated and have ordered their drinks.

To his surprise, Adam smiles. ‘Yeah, that’s about right. I’m sorry for expecting you not to be. I know you’re having a hard time with the Noah thing.’

Ronan just nods. He keeps thinking about Noah to the point where he’s distracted from day to day life. It’s really annoying.

Dinner with Adam is mostly quiet. They both know that talking can so easily lead to more fighting and neither of them wants to give up their truce so soon.

At one point, when they’re waiting for the waiter to bring the check, Adam says, ‘I think Noah was in love with you.’ Ronan doesn’t know if he means to be comforting or just wants Ronan to know.

Ronan doesn’t react, just gets up to see what’s taking the waiter so long.

-

It’s raining like crazy. Ronan is bent over the wheel of the BMW like a grandma in an attempt to see something beyond his drenched windows. The windshield wipers are working as fast as they can and the world still mostly consists of smudges.

That he sees the guy walking by the side of the road and recognises him as Noah is a miracle. He hits the brakes maybe a little dramatically, his tires, the rain and the tarmac working together to make a noise that makes Noah jump.

He turns around, raising a hand over his eyes as if that will shield them from the rain.

Ronan leans over to the passenger side and opens the door. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘You’ll get trench foot.’

Noah does get in, grinning despite being soaked to the bone. ‘My feet are the least of my worry,’ he says while he closes the door. ‘Isn’t this car too fancy to be picking up rained out losers?’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll send you the check. There’s a, like a rag under your seat. I’m pretty sure it’s clean and it’s - absorbent.’ He doesn’t really know what it is about Noah that makes him talk like an idiot. It was never like that when Noah was still dead.

Noah bends down to reach under the seatbelt, finds the rag, smells it, then starts dabbing at his wet hair. He starts to say something, but Ronan interrupts him.

‘If you want to go to Whelk’s, you can walk.’

Noah winces. ‘You really don’t like him, do you?’

‘No.’

‘I was actually gonna head home anyway.’

‘You were gonna walk, what, four miles in this weather?’

Noah shrugs.

‘Didn’t you check the weather this morning?’

‘Whelk was gonna drive me.’

‘But he didn’t?’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

Noah shrugs. ‘He just didn’t show up. He does that sometimes.’

‘And that doesn’t bother you?’

Noah shrugs again, it’s infuriating. ‘Not really.’

‘Don’t you feel like you deserve better?’

He shrugs again. Instead of answering, he fusses with his still-wet hair, looking out the window.

Ronan cranks up the heating, but it doesn’t make Noah’s shivering any less, so instead he speeds up, wanting to get Noah to a warm place as fast as possible. Noah gives him directions to his parents’ house and thanks him for the ride, but they don’t say anything else.

-

Now that Ronan knows about it, he notices it more and more. Noah gets driven home or to Whelk’s place every day after school. Even when swim practice runs late, Whelk is sitting in his car in the parking lot, tapping along to some song on his steering wheel. He doesn’t kiss Noah when he enters the car, just smiles at him in a way he shouldn’t, like he deserves Noah.

Ronan keeps dreaming up baseball bats, golf clubs, a medieval flail, once, to Gansey’s delight. He wants use one of them on Whelk’s car. It wouldn’t be enough, but at least it would be something. Because Whelk gets to smile at Noah all day, gets to drive him around and touch him and talk to him, to kiss him, after bludgeoning him to death. Ronan, on the other hand, gets glimpses in the hallway, an empty room next to his, a car that isn’t haunted anymore.

Noah has pulled the shortest straw out of the three of them, though, stuck with his murderer without knowing it.

Even if Whelk wasn’t a murderer, he’d still be a horrible boyfriend. It’s been less than two weeks since Ronan drove Noah home through the pouring rain and when he pulls out of the school parking lot, he sees Noah walking by the side of the road again. It’s not raining, but Ronan stops anyway. Whelk’s house is way closer to Aglionby than Noah’s parents’ home. If he walks, he’ll probably go to Whelk’s, but if Ronan drives him, he’ll hopefully be willing to go to his parents’ house instead.

He stops and pops open the passenger door. Noah is smiling as he gets in. He has a bruise on his cheek that probably looks worse under the make-up he’s covered it with at the beginning of the day. It’s only vaguely visible where the product has worn off over the day, but Ronan still recognises it as the kind of bruise that can only be made by a human hand.

‘Hey, Ronan,’ he says, closing the door once he’s in the car. ‘I feel like you’re going to ruin your whole rebel without a cause reputation if you keep being nice to me.’

Ronan ignores him and drives off, going in the direction of Noah’s parents’ house without asking.

‘I was headed to Whelk’s,’ Noah says.

‘Pretty rebellious of me not to take you there, huh?’

Noah smiles and moves his attention to the radio. Ronan’s phone is connected to the car radio with an aux cable and Noah picks it up. ‘Can I?’, he asks and Ronan nods. He starts scrolling through the music on Ronan’s Spotify while he talks. 

‘We’re doing another movie night next week. It’s Tuesday at seven again, if you want to come.’

Ronan just nods. The music Noah eventually settles on is quiet and mellow, not quite what Ronan would have expected. It’s not a playlist he really ever listens to.

‘How come you don’t have a car?’, he asks, before he can think too much about how Noah and him used to listen to music together. Sometimes, Noah would tell him about memories connected to the songs. He’d mention Whelk, but never get into memories having to do with him too much.

He shrugs, small smile playing on his lips, still going through music on Ronan’s phone. ‘My parents refuse to pay for it. They want me to earn every cent for it myself. And I’m not very good at saving, so I probably won’t ever be able to afford one.’

Ronan doesn’t really know what to say, just wants things to go back to normal already. He wants Noah back at Monmouth, making fun of Ronan, intruding on his dreams, waking him from nightmares.

‘Yeees,’ Noah says, dragging out the word. The Murder Squash song comes on, which makes Ronan both sad and happy. Noah starts singing along obnoxiously, so Ronan has to join in, reminding himself that this isn’t the same, that he’s still a stranger to Noah. That for all he knows, Noah is still a stranger to him. He’s not the same boy as the ghost Ronan remembers.

Noah is smiling, though, and Ronan wishes he could just pull over and watch Noah instead of the road without being weird. He’s fucking beautiful and Ronan is probably too late to notice it or he noticed it all along but he’s too late to admit it to himself. Either way, his timing is shit, everything sucks, he wishes Noah was still a ghost, et cetera. He’s been over this a million times before.

The song ends and Noah puts on something else, one of his favourite songs, Ronan knows. ‘This playlist is amazing!’, he says and something in Ronan’s chest goes cold when he realises that he has a handful of playlists with just Noah’s favourite music on his Spotify, that all the titles are ghost puns, that this Noah, the wrong one, can just _see_ them.

‘Yeah, well, it’s not meant for you,’ Ronan says, grabbing his phone from Noah and glancing away from the road to pick another song.

‘Who is it for, then? You should introduce us, this person has the exact same taste in music I do.’

‘He has better taste in men,’ Ronan says, reaching out to lightly tap Noah’s bruised cheek.

He stops in front of Noah’s house, nauseous with the whole thing: the playlists and Noah’s enthusiasm over them, the fact that his cheek is bruised by someone he doesn’t remember is a murderer.

Noah looks at him in a way Ronan doesn’t understand, and Ronan realises he hasn’t answered Noah’s question yet.

‘He’s gone. The person from that playlist.’

‘Oh,’ Noah says. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s okay. He’s supposed to be in a better place now, right?’

‘I guess so,’ Noah says. For a moment they’re both silent. ‘Thanks for driving me,’ Noah says then.

Ronan nods. ‘Hey,’ he says before Noah can leave the car. Noah turns to him questioningly and Ronan slowly moves forward, kissing his unbruised cheek.

Noah smiles at him, cheeks pink, and leaves the car.

-

Adam is busy trying to balance work, school and Cabeswater, so despite having made up with Ronan, they still don’t talk a lot. Mostly they eat lunch together with Gansey and talk in the morning before school starts or between classes. Adam doesn’t really have much time beyond that. So it’s at least a little weird when Adam shows up at Monmouth, specifically to see Ronan, despite them not having anything school-related to do.

He closes the door to Ronan’s room behind himself once Ronan tells him he can come in, looking calm but angry. Ronan picks through his memory trying to figure out what he did wrong this time, but comes up short.

‘I’m trying to give you the benefit of the doubt here,’ Adam says slowly. ‘But it seems to me like you’re flirting with Noah an awful lot.’

Ronan is confused, but nods because what Adam’s saying is true. Maybe he’s here to yell at Ronan for being gay or something.

Adam’s mouth opens slightly, his eyes widen momentarily the same way they do when he’s hurt or taken aback. ‘But – you – It’s Noah! How can you do that to him? Do you really have so little respect for him, that you’d treat him like some – some _prize_ to be won?’

‘He’s with _Whelk_.’

‘I know Whelk is a piece of shit, but how fucking spiteful do you have to be to want to hurt Noah, of all people, just to get back at him?’

‘This isn’t about Whelk! Don’t you want Noah to be away from him?’

‘Yeah, but not like this. I don’t want Noah to be hurt even more when he not only loses his boyfriend but gets rejected by you, too.’

‘That’s fucking ridiculous! He’ll survive rejection, what he won’t fucking survive is a skateboard to the head!’

‘You’re leading him on. I don’t care if you’re doing it for the right reasons, it’s the wrong thing to do. Noah doesn’t deserve it.’

‘It’s nothing like that! At least I’m doing _something_ to help him, instead of letting him be with an abusive, asshole murderer!’

Adam is quiet, mouth open like he’s ready to throw another retort at Ronan, but instead he breathes in, leaning back on his heels for a moment, then swaying forward again. When he speaks again his voice isn’t as harsh anymore, almost soft. ‘Just tell me that you’re in love with him, that you have the intention of getting with him if he wants to, just – anything to make this okay?’

Ronan purses his lips. It’s completely unfair of Adam to do this, to make this being okay depend entirely on Ronan saying something out loud that they both know he would never say. Even if he were in love with Noah, which he isn’t, even if he wanted to be in a relationship with him, which he doesn’t, Ronan isn’t going to say that.

Adam takes his silence for what it as and nods, mostly to himself, pulling his bottom lip between his teeth in irritation. Ronan hates how contained Adam’s anger can be, how it’s somehow louder, more punishing than Ronan’s noisy violence. The door clicks shut quietly behind Adam. Ronan can barely hear his footsteps on the stairs.

-

So he’s back to not talking to Adam, which he’s okay with. He doesn’t need Adam. Inexplicably, he has Blue now, who sits in Noah’s room with him and talks about the way Noah sounds when he speaks Polish, that she noticed his nails are really well taken care of, that he helped her mom cook yesterday evening and the stew they made turned out delicious. 

Ronan ignores her as he usually does, although he’s actually listening intently this time. As annoying as it is to hear her fawn over Noah like this, it’s nice, too. Noah needs people in his life who love him as fiercely as Blue does, and who would never hurt him.

She doesn’t ask him about Adam, although she must know by now that Adam disapproves of their whole dumb plan.

Instead, once she’s finished crushing on Noah, she goes on about some selfish thing Calla did, just venting, lying on her back in Noah’s bed with her feet up against the wall.

Ronan is sitting with his back against the door, where he would sometimes sit back when Noah was still alive and they were both trying not to sleep. Noah would sit in his desk chair, spinning it by kicking his foot against the leg of his desk and complaining about how he couldn’t get dizzy anymore because he was dead. This was before Ronan actually knew he was dead. The few times he somehow fell asleep right there on the floor in front of the door, Noah tucked a sweater under his head and draped a blanket over him. It was always the same sweater, the only item of clothing Noah seemed to have beside the uniform he was always wearing. It was one he’d gotten at a Blink-182 concert and actually had Travis Barker’s autograph over the logo on the back. Ronan knows now that he must have gone to get it from his parent’s house, somehow succeeding in taking hold of it and flickering back to Monmouth despite how far away from the ley line their house is. He wonders what memories are attached to it that made it so important that Noah went to get it.

It disappeared when Noah came back to life, along with the few other belongings of Noah’s that had been laying around the room. The only things still in the room were the furniture and a handful of dream objects Ronan had given to Noah over the course of the last year.

He has it in his hands now, a forged version of the sweater that smells exactly the same, and slowly lies down on his side, tucking it under his head. 

Blue has since sat up again and is now lying on her back, cycling her legs in the air. Her head is turned to the side and she watches Ronan, her expression soft. She keeps talking about something, a leaking ceiling in the kitchen of 300 Fox way after someone took too long in the shower on the floor above.

It helps, somehow, and for the first time in weeks, he falls into a solid sleep without having any nightmares. Right before he does, he feels a blanket softly falling over him and imagines it’s Noah.

-

He goes to movie night again. He doesn’t feel like going at all, but the night he fell asleep in front of the door in Noah’s room, Blue ended up sleeping over and he told her he was going while she was having breakfast and he was watching Gansey search his cluttered desk for a homework assignment he had to hand in that day. Because he told her, she will ask him about it and the conversation will be over much faster if he tells her it was fine than if he tells her he didn’t go.

The movie this time is something French that’s surprisingly funny. It’s called Le Tout Nouveau Testament. Noah is sitting a couple of seats away from Ronan and Ronan can hear his laughter above the others, which makes him feel kind of like a creep.

Once the movie is done, he heads out to his car. He’s ready to drive away, but doesn’t. Whelk’s car is nowhere to be seen, which means that Noah either has another ride or doesn’t have a ride at all, so Ronan waits, feeling like a creep again.

The other people who came to watch the movie start to filter out of the building and Noah does, too, but lingers behind while everyone else leaves, glancing at his phone every so often.

Ronan makes to drive out of the parking lot, stopping beside Noah, who’s standing near the entrance.

He pops open the passenger door. Noah hesitates to get in this time, glancing back at his phone. ‘You get to pick the music,’ he says. He’s thinking about what Blue said, about how Whelk probably doesn’t give a fuck about any of the stuff Noah is interested in, and sooner or later, Noah is going to want to be with someone who does.

Noah gets in and pulls the door shut behind him. Ronan pulls out of the parking lot. 

‘No chance that you’d drive me to Whelk’s just this once, is there?’

‘No chance,’ Ronan confirms.

Noah takes Ronan’s phone and puts on something cheerful and loud, more like what Ronan would expect from Noah’s music choices.

‘Did you like the movie?’, Noah asks.

‘Yeah,’ Ronan says.

‘It was sort of sad, though, right?’

‘Was it?’

‘Not at the end, but, like, how God was shitty to everyone all the time?’

‘Yeah… Yeah, I guess that’s sad.’

‘I don’t want to end up like that.’

‘Like what?’

‘Being treated like that all the time.’

Ronan doesn’t say anything, unsure of what he could possibly say.

Noah doesn’t say anything, either and they listen to the cheery music Noah picks out for the remainder of the drive.

Ronan kisses Noah’s cheek again before Noah leaves the car and this time, Noah puts a hand on the back of Ronan’s head, keeping him from pulling away. They stay like that, their faces pressed together, until Ronan finally pulls Noah closer, into an actual hug. He can hear his own heartbeat, can hear the long breath Noah lets out. 

They don’t say anything when Noah gets out of the car. Ronan sits there for a couple of minutes, surrounded by Noah’s noisy music and the smell of his cologne, before finally driving away.

-

Ronan goes to another substance party. Noah is there, wearing a too-big hoodie that definitely belongs to Swan. He’s already stoned, leaned back against a couch that Kavinsky either dreamed up or someone just dumped here. He’s listening to something Skov, who’s sitting beside him, is saying. They’re turned towards each other, both resting their heads against the couch and Noah is holding onto Skov’s wrist and tracing the intricate tattoo the back of his hand.

Ronan finds the whole thing nauseating, but blames it on the whiskey he had before coming here.

He drinks more, finds Kavinsky sitting on the hood of a car that isn’t his, listens to his bullshit for a while. He’s off on a rant about Proko, which quickly turns into a rant about dream things, until he focuses on Proko again and before long he’s just talking about sex. Ronan is too drunk to feel uncomfortable with it, watches Kavinsky’s blown pupils and his exaggerated hand gestures, the place where his lip is split.

Ronan has been trying to figure out if this next step in his plan to drive Noah and Whelk apart is completely necessary. He’s way too embarrassed to talk about it out loud, so he hasn’t been able to ask Blue, but he’s been trying to imagine what she’d say. She’d probably tell him to go for it and heavily imply that he wants to be with Noah. At least, that’s what she’s been doing so far any time his little mission came up in conversation.

On the one hand, Ronan feels like if he kissed a guy in front of Noah, it would help to let Noah know that he has options, that Whelk isn’t the only guy interested in guys in the entire world. On the other hand it might make him think that Ronan is interested in someone else instead of in Noah. He might be hurt and come to depend on Whelk more instead of less.

As the night proceeds, Ronan keeps thinking about it, although it gets harder and harder to keep track of arguments and counter arguments as he finds more stuff to drink.

Eventually he settles on flirting with Kavinsky, laying it on thickly so Noah can’t mistake it for anything else from where he’s sitting a couple of yards away, on the ground with Jiang and two girls Ronan vaguely recognises from other substance parties, while Ronan and K are on the couch.

Kavinsky just rolls with it, happy to get into Ronan’s space. His eyes drift to Ronan’s lips but he doesn’t kiss him, just smiles in that predatory way he does.

Ronan can feel Noah watching him, so he leans closer to speak into Kavinsky’s ear, touches his arm, smiles.

Kavinsky grins. ‘Finally gotten over your Catholic guilt?’

‘Fuck you,’ Ronan says, which only makes Kavinsky grin wider.

‘You want to really make him jealous?’

‘Who?’

‘Czerny. I have eyes, Lynch.’ Kavinsky’s fingers trail down his ribcage, grab his hip. ‘Come on, show him you’ve got what that perv Whelk don’t.’

Ronan hates that everyone seems to think he’s doing this to spite Whelk, not to help Noah. ‘No,’ he says. ‘He’s seen enough.’ He sits back, pushes Kavinsky’s hand away.

Kavinsky laughs. ‘Oh you’re really into him, huh? This isn’t just ‘cause of Whelk?’

Ronan ignores him, gets up off the couch and away from Kavinsky.

He finds a quiet place somewhere in between the cars, leans against the flat tire of one while he drinks some more.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there before Noah sits down next to him, a half empty bottle of champagne in one hand and a joint in the other.

Ronan takes the bottle of champagne when Noah offers it, setting the empty bottle he’d been holding down on the ground.

Noah takes a drag of his joint, the earthy smell of it surrounding them when Noah exhales.

For a while, neither of them talks. Then Noah says, very calmly, ‘I feel like you shouldn’t tell me I have bad taste in guys when you’re fucking Joe.’

It takes Ronan a moment to realise by ‘Joe’ Noah means Kavinsky. Ronan wonders why he’d call him by his first name.

‘I’m not fucking him,’ Ronan says. ‘And if he hit me once, I’d never see him again.’

‘You don’t know that.’

Ronan sets down the bottle with a loud clack and turns to Noah. ‘Because I don’t get it, right? Because it’s _so_ complicated when you’re too much of a coward to leave someone who hurts you.’

Noah ignores his sarcasm, his face looking hard and closed-off. ‘Exactly. It’s really fucking hard.’

‘It’s not! How hard can it be? You can stay at your parents’ house, you can get rides from me, if he tries to do anything, you tell the school you’re being harassed by a teacher. You can get out of this so easily.’

‘I can’t!’

‘You just don’t want to!’

‘It’s not –‘

‘You’ve always been such a coward! Always running away from your problems!’

‘Ronan –‘

‘Look at you, you know you got that scar from Whelk, right? You know he can do even worse.’

‘It was –‘

‘It’s so fucked up, Noah. You have all these people who treat you well and you stay with some abusive piece of shit who bruises you up and leaves you out in the rain. I gave up so much for you to be okay and you’re not! You’re not even trying!’

‘Shut up!’, Noah says. It’s the loudest Ronan has ever heard him. ‘Shut up, Ronan! You don’t know shit! Shut your fucking mouth!’

Ronan raises his hand to drag it over his scalp and Noah fucking flinches like Ronan’s going to hit him.

Ronan is too angry to speak, that Noah would think that Ronan would hurt him, that Ronan would in any way be like Whelk, so he leaves, not looking back.

-

Noah still gives him weak smiles at school, but doesn’t try to talk to him. Ronan acknowledges him with a look, but doesn’t nod at him like he usually does. Ronan knows he’s messing up the plan, that he’s probably only driving Noah back to Whelk by being angry at him, but he’s too hurt to care.

None of this was worth it. Noah was better off being dead and sad, because at least he wasn’t being abused anymore, at least he was rid of Whelk.

He starts actively avoiding Gansey instead of passively ignoring him, tells Blue to fuck off, which doesn’t work until he says the most hurtful things he can think off and she walks away.

He doesn’t go straight to Monmouth after school, listens to music in his car on the shoulder of some empty road and sulks, because it’s the easiest way not to talk to Gansey.

Because of this, he doesn’t see it coming at all when he walks into Monmouth a couple of days after the fight with Noah and Noah is sitting in the middle of Gansey’s miniature Henrietta with Gansey.

They both look up when Ronan enters and he tries to get his expression under control, to be neutral instead of terrified. Because Noah can’t be here, can’t come and mess up the only place Ronan still has that has memories of his ghost best friend. He feels like having this Noah here is going to erase his Noah, the dead one, the one who knew him inside and out.

‘Hi,’ Noah says. Beside him, Gansey looks vulnerable, almost sad.

‘We’re working on a history assignment,’ he explains.

Ronan gives them a nod. When he hears plastic crinkling, he’s reminded that he’s holding a packet of instant ramen that he’s now clenching in his fist and he makes his way to the bathroom/kitchen, locking himself into his room as soon as his food is done.

-

He’s slightly tipsy the next time he sees Noah, a couple of days later, which is why he assumes this is his fault, that he’s hallucinating Noah or dreamt him up, not the wrong, opaque body he has now, but the ghost one, pale in the dark. But this Noah doesn’t have a smudge on his cheek, but a slightly more subtle scar, which is how Ronan knows he’s real. 

‘Oh,’ Noah says when he sees Ronan. They’re both on the way to the bathroom. ‘Um, Gansey and I were working on the Civil War thing really late, so he let me sleep over, with the storm and all.’

Lightning flickered outside as if to emphasise Noah couldn’t go home through weather like that.

‘You’re –‘ Ronan is trying to wrap his head around what this means, why this has his stomach in knots. ‘- in the bed with him?’

Noah’s answer is way worse that the idea of Gansey getting to sleep next to someone Ronan misses so desperately. ‘No, he let me stay in the spare bedroom.’

Ronan just nods, walks numbly back to his room, sits down in his desk chair, fingers itching in a way only a fast drive can scratch, but he doesn’t want to leave his room, doesn’t want to walk around in Monmouth now that it’s been changed fundamentally, now that an essential part of it has been painted over. 

Noah sleeping in Noah’s room. Ronan is nauseous with it. He stays at his desk for the rest of the night, and after he somehow falls asleep right there, he wakes up with a clean pair of socks in his hand that smell exactly like Noah’s room

-

He doesn’t talk to Gansey in the morning, because as angry as he is, just thinking about it, about alive Noah sleeping in dead Noah’s bed, Whelk’s Noah in his Noah’s bed, leaves him too scared and disgusted and angry to speak.

Gansey doesn’t look at him all morning, which means at least he knows he messed up. 

Ronan makes sure he doesn’t see Ronan going into Noah’s room that evening.

He sleeps on top of the covers, face pushed into the pillow that smells familiar, but not right at all. He doesn’t sleep well, and doesn’t sleep well for the rest of the week, either, but keeps sleeping in Noah’s room anyway.

-

It’s almost two full weeks after the fight at the substance party that Blue calls him. She hasn’t done that in a while, so he knows it’s serious and picks up.

‘Hey, Ronan. Could you come over? Noah broke up with Whelk.’

He starts searching for a pair of shoes right away. ‘Yeah, of course. I’ll be there in ten. Is he okay?’

‘He’ll be fine. Just come, okay?’

He breaks several speed limits driving to Blue’s house and he’s there in eight minutes instead of ten.

Maura lets him in, shows him to Blue’s room. Blue and Noah are both sitting on her bed, Blue with her arm around Noah and Noah with his knees pulled up, head in his hands. Blue is wearing a compassionate expression, a wet, splotchy washcloth in her hand. Ronan only realises when Noah lifts his head that the stains on the washcloth are from blood.

There’s a cut in his forehead and his nostrils are rimmed dark red, but most of the blood has been cleaned off his face. There’s still some in his hairline, which means he fell down while the cut in his forehead was already bleeding. He still has an old bruise on his jaw, but the bloody nose and the cut seem to be the only new injuries, on his face at least.

‘Hi,’ Ronan says, feeling too tall and clumsy for the room he’s in. He wants to help, wants to do something, but he feels like he can’t. He steps closer to the bed. ‘Noah? Can I, -‘ he reaches up, to Noah’s hair. ‘Can I check if you’re alright?’

Noah nods, eyes on Ronan and Ronan carefully pushes his fingers into his hair, stroking his scalp until he finds a bump.

‘Did you put ice on this?’, he asks when Noah winces at his touch.

‘I’ll go get some,’ Blue says, darting out of the room.

Ronan lets go of Noah and takes a step back. Noah keeps looking at him. 

‘Do you have any other injuries?’

Noah shakes his head. ‘Nothing that ice will fix.’ He tries to smile, although it wasn’t much of a joke. ‘I’m sorry that Blue called you. I told her not to,’ he says. His voice is all quiet and afraid, almost like when he was a ghost.

‘Oh. Do you want me to leave?’

‘No.’ Noah frowns. He seems surprised. ‘Do you actually want to stay?’

‘Of course.’

Noah lets out a shaky laugh. ‘I don’t get why everyone thinks you’re cold.’

Ronan doesn’t say anything. The relief hits him all at once, that Noah isn’t with Whelk anymore, that he’s safe and right here with Ronan. That he’s right here after Ronan has been away from him for so long. 

‘I’ve missed you,’ Noah says.

Ronan wants to laugh hysterically. Saying that he’s missed Noah, too, would be the understatement of the century. When Noah says he’s missed Ronan, he means he’s missed short hallway conversations and getting rides to his house and having Ronan try to flirt with him. It doesn’t mean he’s missed living next to him or sharing a bed with him at night or trying to cheer him up when he’s sad. He doesn’t mean kissing in the Mustang or wrestling on the floor or being in the same room together doing different things.

He kneels on the bed to hug Noah, who lets out a huff and circles his arms around Ronan, his hand going up to the back of Ronan’s head, Ronan’s face pressed against his hair. He can hear Noah breathing, can smell his cologne and his sweat, the coconut shampoo he used in his hair this morning.

The click of the door warns him that Blue is back. Ronan raises his head and reluctantly lets Noah go. Blue hands Noah a sack of frozen peas wrapped in a kitchen towel.

The three of them end up sitting next to each other on the bed, staring at Blue’s chaotically decorated wall in silence while Noah keeps the frozen peas pressed to his head.

‘So if Ronan and I were to go to Whelk’s house and demolish his car with Gansey’s golf clubs, that would be cool with you or…’, Blue starts.

‘It wouldn’t.’

‘Spoilsport,’ Ronan says.

Noah is smiling, though, and keeps smiling when Blue wraps an arm around his shoulders and Ronan shuffles closer to lean against his side.

-

Noah tries to cycle to school when he can, but on bad weather days, Ronan becomes the one who drives Noah home after school. He likes the days Noah has swimming practice best, when he changes into his own clothes instead of his uniform.

It doesn’t surprise him that Noah favours pastels and weird T-shirt designs, but what does surprise him is his own reaction to it. It’s not the first time he sees Noah out of his uniform, he’s always in regular clothes at substance parties and movie nights, maybe it’s this specific outfit, but the first time Noah hops into his car after swim practice, trying to avoid the rain with just a hand over his head, Ronan is reeling with how beautiful Noah is.

He ignores it, stomps it down, knowing Noah doesn’t need another creep in his life right now. He needs a friend.

‘Your hair looks like shit,’ he says in greeting.

Noah grins sheepishly, dragging a hand through his hair, which is still wet and sticking up at all ends. ‘At least I don’t shave it.’

‘With that bleach job you’d just look bald.’

Noah is grinning, already putting on a song on Ronan’s phone. ‘Hey, um, could you come pick me up at Joe’s later tonight?’

‘Kavinsky’s?’

‘Yeah. He’s coming to pick me up later, or he’s probably sending someone to pick me up, but no one is going to stay sober long enough to drive me back. And I hate sleeping over at his place, it’s creepy. I can ask my parents, they should be off work by then.’

‘No, I’ll do it. Are you going to see Jiang or something?’

‘No, um, I’m sort of tutoring Joe? Actually tutoring him, not in the way Barry was tutoring me.’

Ronan is insanely jealous, but stomps that down, too.

Noah changes the subject and any tension at the mention of Kavinsky and Whelk, two of Ronan’s least favourite people, slowly dissipates.

Before Noah gets out of the car, Ronan kisses his cheek.

-

When Ronan comes to pick Noah up at Kavinsky's, Noah is already waiting down the driveway, Kavinsky nowhere in sight.

He looks exhausted as he heaves himself into the car, but smiles at Ronan, who twists up one corner of his mouth and nods in greeting.

Noah has his backpack slung over one shoulder and sets it down in the space in front of the passenger seat, but he holds something else in the palm of his hand, something Ronan doesn't recognise, although he immediately knows where it came from.

'Did Kavinsky give you that?'

Noah smiles down at the object, the size of an orange, spherical and made out of a shiny material, soft purple and smooth; metal, glass, plastic, maybe painted wood, although that doesn't seem like the kind of material Kavinsky would use in his dreams. 'Yeah,' he says.

'What is it?'

Noah is still fucking smiling. 'Secret.'

'You shouldn't trust the shit he gives you,' Ronan says. He doesn't want to tell Noah what to do, but just the thought of Noah near a thing that came from Kavinsky's mind, something that might hurt him, might numb him, might make him less himself, makes Ronan queasy.

'Oh, I trust it,' Noah says, still looking serene. 'I know where he got it. It's okay.'

For a time, Ronan doesn't know how long, there is silence. 'You know where he got it,' he repeats then.

'Yes.' Noah is looking at him, but with the sparse glances Ronan can manage while driving, he can't decipher Noah's expression.

'You know about -' His mouth is dry, his skin too hot, his heart beating in his throat. 'You know where he got it.'  
Noah doesn't react right away, then he says, carefully, 'I think we both know where he got it, but I'm not going to tell his secret. If you want to be sure, that we know the same thing, you're going to have to say it out loud, Ronan.'

There's another long silence. Ronan stops his car in front of Noah's home. Noah doesn't get out, just waits patiently.

'You know about the dreams,' Ronan whispers. He doesn't know what makes this so difficult, why this small piece of information feels like it's violently tearing through his chest to make its way out of his mouth.

'Yes,' Noah says.

Another silence.

Eventually Ronan unlocks the doors of the BMW, realising he hadn't done that when he put the car in park like he usually does, and leans in to kiss Noah's cheek, leaning back immediately, like he’s kissing a sleeping bear instead of his friend.

Noah's fingers brush his hand on the gear stick. Ronan just breathes. Noah says bye and Ronan nods, but keeps looking at the empty street in front of him. It's eight, but the sun hasn't set yet. The world around them is warm and soft at the edges, the car its own steely universe.

Noah gets out of the car, taking his backpack and his dream thing and his horrible knowledge with him.

Ronan drives away, although once he's in his room twenty minutes later, he doesn't remember parking the car at Monmouth and going up and going into his room and taking off his shoes and socks and sitting down on his bed to stare at the wall, fingers absently turning the translation box over and over.

-

There's no rain for two weeks. Ronan still sees Noah at school and actually drives him once when he's so exhausted after swim practice that Ronan doesn't feel like a creep insisting Noah should drive with him instead of cycling.

Still, brief conversations in the hallway before class aren't the same as sitting two feet away from each other in the BMW with Noah's music on shuffle. He's been steadily filling up his own playlists on Ronan's Spotify and Ronan only feels a little bit weird listening to them even when Noah isn't there.

He wants to talk to him after school, wants to go to Nino's with him or meet him at his house (he's tried to imagine what a room Noah lived in for all of his life would look like, he can’t), but he has no idea what to say. Even now that he's had time to process Noah's revelation, that Noah knows about Kavinsky being able to take things out of dreams into reality, he doesn't know what to think of it. He doesn't know what it means. That Noah is somehow in on the world he's forgotten about, the world of dreams and ghosts and Cabeswater. That Noah knows, at least indirectly, of what Ronan is capable off. It makes him worry about the Mustang and the Travis Barker hoodie and the Noah-body with its scarred cheek, all these things that belonged to Noah and that Ronan dragged out of dreams anyway, even if he didn't have the right to. 

He thinks maybe he should burn the car and the hoodie with it, but he doesn't want to. He wants to sit in the car when he’s feeling lonely, he wants to sleep with the hoodie tucked under his nose. He's had it crumpled between his sheets for weeks now, but it still smells of Noah, of wet leaves and tree sap, a smell that always faintly reminded him of blood. It's a Cabeswater smell, he knows now, because even before Ronan pulled Noah's alive body out of Cabeswater, there had been Noah's ghost form, which belonged to Cabeswater just the same, and smelled of it, too.

He isn't sure what to do, so he drives to 300 Fox Way, where Orla refuses to let him in until Blue comes down from her room and tries to shoo Orla away.

Orla doesn't budge, though, and so Blue joins him in the BMW. They just sit there, in the unmoving car in front of Blue's house. He likes that about Blue, that she always knows what he needs, even when he doesn't. She knows when to be loud, when to push, when to be serious. When to simply wait for him to say what's on his mind. Or maybe she doesn’t, but he’s just so unused to being comforted by someone else that it seems that way, like everything she does is exactly right, when probably just her presence is what makes him feel better. 

'Noah knows that Kavinsky can take things out of dreams,' he says.

'Oh,' Blue says. 'That's fucked up, right? Something about that is fucked up?' The swearword sounds strange coming from her mouth. He’d probably find it funny if he wasn’t feeling like shit.

Something terrible comes to his mind, then. 'Do you think he knows more than just that? That he knows about Cabeswater?'

'Would Cabeswater do that, make him forget us but remember itself?', her voice is quiet and it takes him a moment to realise she sounds scared.

'I don't know.' He tries to take a deep breath, but feels like his lungs lock down halfway through.

'He's coming to dinner tomorrow. Do you want to come to dinner, then, too?'

'Okay.'

For a while, they're both silent.

'Do you still teach him tarot?'

'Yeah.'

'Is it hard, seeing him all the time?' 

For Ronan, seeing Noah is so sporadic that he doesn't have time to overthink it. Sometimes it will be raining or Noah will text him or they will cross in the hallway, and there's no time to be prepared or anxious or uncomfortable, because Noah is there, Ronan has to be there, too, with Noah, before he's gone and Ronan won't know when he gets to talk to him again.

Blue always knows when she'll next see Noah, and knows when he'll leave again. She can bask in his presence like Ronan does, but she can also dread it and then, when he's there, dread the moment he leaves.

'It's becoming easier,' she says at length. 'I still miss him, but at least now we're close enough that it actually makes sense for me to miss him.'

'Yeah,' Ronan says. He wants to say something to make this right, to make her feel better, but he has no idea what.

Blue's hand is resting on the armrest of the passenger seat and Ronan, irrationally, crazily, covers her small hand with his, fits his fingers between hers and squeezes gently. She looks up, surprised, and smiles at him.

-

Dinner is chaotic. Orla isn’t happy that Ronan is joining them and keeps interrogating him about his intentions being there. Persephone keeps quietly shovelling seconds on everyone’s plate and Maura, Calla, Noah and Blue keep up conversation, sometimes derailed by unnecessary disagreements and unfunny jokes. Everyone is so very family-ish in a way Gansey’s family or Ronan’s own has never been. They’re honest and loud and unwilling to apologize for it, lacking all the polish and strained politeness Ronan has come to expect from family dinners.

Noah is comfortable around the women and they clearly adore him. Ronan is sure he’s stayed for dinner often by now; even Orla seems to like him.

Ronan is the one who drives Noah home after dinner, after they’ve both said goodbye to Blue on the porch. 

The soft, cosy feeling of the dinner fades away once they enter the car, replaced by something cold and quiet and empty, like a winter night.

Ronan starts driving. The distance between Noah and Blue’s house is bigger than the distance between Noah’s house and school, so Ronan has time for this, which is both comforting and daunting.

The problem is that he doesn’t know what to say. He’s known for a while that he needs to talk this out with Noah, that he needs to give some kind of explanation for his reaction after finding out Noah knows about taking stuff from dreams, but there’s no way he can explain it, not without explaining how he helped bring Noah back to life.

Eventually, when they’re already a couple of blocks away from Fox Way, he manages, in a quiet, small voice he hates, ‘Do you know what Cabeswater is?’

‘No,’ Noah says.

Something in Ronan untangles, allows him to breathe again.

‘I don’t think we should see each other anymore,’ he says then, surprising even himself. But it’s the right thing to say. It’s too fucked up for them to be friends when Ronan knows everything about Noah, or at least about who Noah used to be, while Noah doesn’t know anything about him. It’s not right, it’s not fair, and it’s never going to work. Ronan is always going to want Noah for who he was, not who he is. ‘Gansey can drive you when you need a ride. I won’t go to substance parties anymore. I’m sorry.’

Noah is quiet for a long time, frowning. ‘Why is me knowing about Joe the thing you freak out about?’

Ronan doesn’t say anything. He can’t really think of an explanation. He knows it has to do with the fact that he dreamed Noah’s body, but even then he can’t really explain why.

Noah picks up the pair of socks Ronan dropped in the cup holder a couple of nights ago, after he dreamt them up. ‘Is it because of this? Because you have dream stuff, too?’

‘That’s just socks.’

‘They’re not. I can tell. I can also tell Kavinsky didn’t dream these.’

Ronan doesn’t say anything, it’s several minutes until Noah speaks again. ‘Is it because of me, because I’m a forgery, too?’ He makes a strange sound at whatever look is on Ronan’s face in that moment, not quite a laugh, not quite anything else, either. ‘Kavinsky doesn’t believe me, but I know I’m like Proko. Whoever dreamt me just did a better job.’

‘Stop talking.’

Noah does.

They drive in silence. Ronan’s hands are clenched around the wheel to stop them from shaking.

They stop at Noah’s house. Ronan doesn’t move to kiss him, doesn’t move at all, just stares ahead and waits for Noah to leave. 

Noah’s lips press against his cheek. Ronan stays very still. Noah retreats, the passenger side door clicks open. ‘I’m sorry,’ Noah says. ‘I know there’s something going on that I don’t know about, but if I have anything to do with it, I’m sorry.’ Ronan doesn’t react. Noah doesn’t have anything to be sorry about, although sometimes, in the dead of night, Ronan is angry at him for forgetting about them. 

‘I’m not gonna let Gansey drive me. If you don’t drive me, I’ll just cycle trough the rain and die of trench foot.’ Ronan doesn’t react. ‘You better be there when it’s raining, okay? I’m not dying of trench foot.’

‘Fuck you,’ Ronan says and he doesn’t have to look up to know Noah is smiling. He finally leaves and Ronan feels nauseous and light-headed, not sure if he’s happy Noah wants to keep seeing him or devastated that the torture of being around Noah still isn’t going to end.

-

He keeps driving Noah, although drives are now silent, except for the music. Sometimes Noah tells him about his day, rambles about annoying teachers and his worries over Jiang’s dwindling grades and how the swim team seems to be getting better and better while all competitions that matter are already over.

Ronan ignores him, although he cherishes every moment he gets to spend with Noah. The closer they get to summer, the less the weather acts up, and so driving Noah around becomes a rare treat, something he craves in the dark of night and only gets to have when he’s accepted that he won’t.

It’s a Tuesday and Ronan is driving Noah back from Kavinsky after one of their tutoring sessions when Noah suddenly says, ‘You know what, I miss Barry. And I hate to admit it, because that means I’m weak, right? But I do. I miss him. Because he was my best friend, you know. Even before we started fucking. And he was good to me, really good, except when he wasn’t. And it’s so weird seeing him in school, in class. That has always been weird. ‘Cause, I don’t know, he’s different, I guess, when he’s in front of a bunch of students. He’s the way he is when he’s angry with me, but in front of a class, he’s like that all the time. So I always kind of hated his classes because of that. But now it’s way weirder because he doesn’t look at me at all except sometimes he does and I don’t know how to react.’ He’s quiet for a while. ‘I kinda wish we could go back to being friends. He was sort of manipulative even then, but he wasn’t as harsh with me, though I guess he wasn’t as gentle, either. I miss it. Even the bad times. Because – I don’t know… It’s not that I liked that he hurt me, but it just seemed, with him, that he’s only gentle when he hurts you first. So I… I knew that him hurting me meant he still cared. That he wanted me. And I did like that. I liked how much he cared about me, even if he only did so after he’d hurt me.’

‘Shut up,’ Ronan manages. His knuckles are almost white on the steering wheel. It’s the first thing he’s said to Noah since their conversation after dinner at 300 Fox Way.

Noah does, looking cheerful, and once they’re at his house, he kisses Ronan on the cheek like he always does.

-

Blue and him are sitting in the Mustang again. Blue is clearly upset. Her lashes are clumped together with tears, her eyes rimmed red and she keeps fidgeting with her dress, frown on her face, but she refuses to talk about it. Ronan wonders if he should push her until she does, but he thinks maybe that will just make her leave.

‘Why wouldn’t you want to see him anymore?’, she asks, once he’s finished telling her about the conversation he had with Noah after dinner at 300 Fox Way.

‘Because… It’s creepy that I know him and he doesn’t know me. It’s wrong to keep seeing him.’

‘You can also solve that the opposite way,’ Blue says.

Ronan glances at her questioningly.

‘By spending more time with him, getting to know him until he knows everything about you that he did before he forgot.’

Ronan sighs. He’d hoped for an actual solution. ‘That’s gonna take a long time.’

She’s looking at him in a way he hates, like she understands a bunch of stuff about him that he doesn’t want her to. It’s weirdly exhilarating. Neither Gansey nor Adam has ever been that open with how much of him they can see, how much of his bullshit they know without ever leaving because of it. 

‘But isn’t it gonna be worth it? If it’s between that and not having him in your life anymore at all. We’re so lucky, Ronan, to have him back, to have met him at all. Are you really going to throw that away just so you can feel bad about yourself?’

He ignores her, though he makes sure to remember that, to think about later. ‘Are you okay?’, he asks for now.

She almost smiles, then shakes her head. ‘No, not right now, no.’

‘Do you want to talk about it?’

‘It’s nothing big.’

‘But do you want to talk about it?’

Now she does smile. ‘Yeah.’

-

He picks Noah up at his house the next day, even though it isn’t raining and drives him to school. They’re both mostly quiet. Ronan is always quiet and Noah usually is, too, in the mornings. Contrary to what Ronan expected, Noah isn’t much of a morning person at all unless he has barely slept, in which case he’s energetic and loud and yawns a lot.

Then, Ronan takes a deep breath and asks, ‘Will you tell me about your family?’

He figures it’s a good place to start. He doesn’t know a lot about Noah’s family. He never really talked about them back when he was dead, so Noah won’t be telling him a bunch of things he already knows.

Noah looks surprised, but a smile slowly breaks out on his face and he starts adjusting the strap of his backpack in his lap. ‘Okay. Sure. My parents are both immigrants. My mom’s family came from Poland to the US in the 1940’s, when the USSR was starting to expand really aggressively. My dad immigrated from Canada a couple of years before they met, but some of his family is from Azerbaijan. They own a company that makes syringes and tubing and stuff for hospitals.’ He’s quiet for a moment. Ronan can feel his eyes on him. ‘You’d think they’d hate each other, running a company together, but they don’t. They’re actually really sweet together. They’re like best friends. I think maybe it’s because they both came here pretty much alone. For a long time, they only had each other. Mom has a couple of aunts and uncles here, but they’re not all that close. It was just her and her mom until her mom died. So now it’s just my parents and my two sisters and I.’

‘Your sisters?’, Ronan prods, not sure he’s doing this right, but hoping he is, because this is nice, listening to Noah, imagining him with his parents and his sisters, at a dinner table and in a garden and on family trips.

Noah smiles. ‘There’s Adele and there’s Rachel.’ And Noah proceeds to tell him about them, sounding loving even when he’s saying negative stuff.

Ronan keeps asking questions, suddenly greedy for this, for stories about people who love Noah, who only know him as a living kid, not a dead one. Noah tells him about an accident involving a trampoline and a swing and about his sisters dressing him up as a girl and doing his make-up and painting his nails, about the time they mixed a bunch of bath products together and their mom didn’t want to waste all of the strange mixture, so they kept using it to wash their hair and it actually wasn’t that bad.

They’re a tiny bit late for class because Ronan doesn’t drive as fast as he usually does, hoping to get just one more story out of Noah before they have to go their separate ways.

After school, when Noah gets into the car, he says, ‘Now it’s your turn.’

And so Ronan tells him about his mom and Declan and Matthew. He even talks about his dad a little bit, although it feels more like catching Noah up on stuff he’s already supposed to know. It’s nice, though, Noah’s questions and his interest and his empathy. 

It becomes a regular thing. Ronan drives Noah to school and back, occasionally picks him up at Kavinsky’s, and they talk about their childhood and their future and all the dumb shit they’ve pulled in the last few years. Noah tells him about his friendship with Jiang and why he joined the activities committee and even how he met Whelk because he was one of his sister’s friends, how in a lot of Noah’s memories of him, it was almost like they were the exact same age, like Whelk was a student, too, instead of a teacher. Ronan tells him about Gansey and Adam and more than once, they sit in the parked car in front of Noah’s house and talk about how great Blue is.

-

Once, when Ronan has picked Noah up from Kavinsky’s and is driving him home, Noah tells him how the whole tutoring thing started. He slept over in a guest room in Kavinsky’s house after a party and instead of waking up like normal, he woke up in Kavinsky’s dream, where Kavinsky was trying to steal something to take the edge of his hangover. Noah somehow knew what to do better than he did, reminding him that he shouldn’t focus on details, should imagine whatever he wanted as a whole, otherwise it wouldn’t come out right. So now Noah helps him untangle objects from his dreams on a regular basis, getting dream things and non-dream weed in return.

Ronan doesn’t follow up his story with a question, doesn’t say anything at all, feeling sick knowing that Cabeswater let Noah keep that, the experience he had from sharing dreams with Ronan, without letting Noah keep Ronan himself.

Noah doesn’t push, just waits for Ronan to work through whatever he’s working through. It’s happened before, that one of Noah’s stories reminded him of his Noah, the one he’s lost, and Noah has handled it with patience and quiet. Even when Ronan gets angry at him for no reason, Noah seems content to just wait it out. The only thing Ronan doesn’t like about it is the way Noah keeps giving him these searching looks, and forgives him without hesitation when he’s mean.

Five minutes into the silence, Ronan’s phone rings. He ignores it. The ringing stops, then immediately starts again, which means it’s Gansey, who has no fucking patience.

He pulls over on the side of the road and picks up the phone, knowing Gansey isn’t going to call twice for no reason.

‘Ronan!’, Gansey sounds relieved. ‘Is there any way you could pick up Adam from the garage right now? I told him I’m on my way but the Pig isn’t starting and I don’t want to keep him waiting, he’s always so busy -‘

‘Okay,’ Ronan says. ‘It’s on my way anyway.’

‘Oh, thank you –‘

Ronan ends the call and sets down the phone before he starts the car again. ‘I gotta pick up Adam from work, okay?’

‘Of course,’ Noah says and they drive in silence to the garage, where Adam is already waiting outside. He looks relieved to see Ronan, so he really must have too much work to be able to wait around for the Pig to start.

He gets in with a quiet ‘hello’ that Ronan and Noah both return.

Noah starts making small talk, because he’s Noah so of course he does. He asks about Adam’s job at the garage and before Ronan knows it, Adam is leaning forward in his seat and they’re deep in conversation about cars and all the dumb details of cars. Ronan can’t help smiling fondly at Noah, who is twisted in his chair to look at Adam. Adam looks comfortable talking to Noah, his voice different from the way it normally is with strangers. 

Ronan has to remind himself that Adam has known Noah for a long time, too, that Noah isn’t someone new in Ronan’s life whom his friends have never met. Ronan doesn’t think Adam and Noah have talked a lot since Noah came back from the dead, but that doesn’t erase the years and years they did talk, the years Noah forgot about but Adam still remembers.

They stop in front of Noah’s house and Noah and Adam wrap up their conversation. Noah turns to Ronan and leans in closer for their usual kiss goodbye. ‘I’m gonna call you later tonight, okay?’, he says before kissing Ronan on the cheek.

He’s been doing that more and more, calling Ronan, although Noah knows he prefers texting. Ronan always worries, sure that he’s not going to be able to think of anything to say, but each time once he has Noah at the other end of the line, he can think of lots of things to say and the conversations always end up lasting longer than he expects. He’s taken to listening to Noah talk through the phone curled up on his bed, head pillowed on the Travis Barker hoodie that still hasn’t lost its scent. It’s weird and he’s going to make sure no one ever finds out, but he’s feeling the best he has since Noah came back to life, so he’s not going to stop.

‘Yeah, okay,’ Ronan says.

Noah leaves with a ‘Goodbye, Adam!’, and Ronan drives off again once Adam has gotten into the passenger seat.

Adam is frowning, face breaking out into an almost-smile before going right back to frowning.

Ronan ignores him, which becomes harder when Adam speaks up.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

Ronan keeps his eyes firmly on the road, although he can feel Adam looking at him. ‘Tell you what?’

‘About Noah. All this time I was mad at you for leading him on, but you aren’t.’

‘There’s nothing to tell,’ Ronan says, even though Adam has barely finished speaking.

‘That was nothing?’ Adam sounds incredulous. Ronan sort of wants to kick him out of the car for even suggesting it, for pretending that the thing Ronan wants so badly is even an option.

‘It was.’

Adam is silent for a while. Then, ‘Blue told me Noah broke up with Whelk.’

‘He did.’

‘That’s good. That’s really good.’

‘You don’t get to say that when you didn’t do anything to stop them from staying together.’

Adam doesn’t say anything to that. For a while, they’re both silent.

At length, Adam asks, ‘Are you in love with Noah?’

Ronan doesn’t react.

‘I think you are,’ Adam says. ‘I think you should do something about it.’

Ronan ignores him, but his cheeks grow hot. He doesn’t say a word to Adam for the rest of the drive.

-

There are eight days of normality, of driving Noah around and talking to him over the phone, of Blue, Adam and Gansey reluctantly taking up more space in his life again.

Ronan himself feels like he’s less and less there, like he’s constantly caught up in what-ifs and endless possible futures, some of them unbearable to live in, others unbearable to miss out on. 

There’s nothing quite as mortifying as facing his own feelings and accepting how vulnerable they make him, nothing quiet as exhilarating as the realisation that he wants it, wants to suffer the humiliation of needing someone else, if he gets to have everything that comes with it, too, if he gets to have Noah. 

And so on the eighth day, after school, he asks Noah if it’s okay that they drive to Ronan’s instead of to Noah’s house.

It is, and twenty minutes later, they’re in the parking lot in front of Monmouth Manufacturing. Ronan doesn’t lead Noah up the stairs to the second floor, but walks past the building, through the nettles and useless debris to the Mustang.

He hears the awed sound Noah makes when he sees the car, but doesn’t hear much else over the sound of his own heart beating in his throat.

He tosses the keys at Noah, who catches them distractedly and keeps staring dumbly at the car. ‘Get in, loser,’ Ronan says, already waiting by the passenger door. Noah finally unlocks the car and gets in, quiet, eyes wide. Ronan joins him and once the doors are all closed, the air feels different, still, more like a church than a car. 

He remembers the windows they’re now surrounded by, Noah’s messy, frustrated handwriting across them, saying _MURDERED, MURDERED_ and Ronan’s own scrawl over them, _REMEMBERED_ , a promise he’s living up to every day.

‘Whose car is this?’, Noah asks, studying the stickers on the dashboard, tracing them with his fingers, .

‘For a little while, it belonged to the guy from the playlists, the one who’s gone.’

Noah is studying his face in a way Ronan doesn’t understand, in a way that makes his heart feel like it’s going to collapse. Noah can see too much of him. Way too much. But that’s the point. That’s how this works, how letting someone in works. 

Noah keeps looking at him, right into his eyes, even as he says, ‘It’s beautiful.’

And right there in the car, looking at Noah, with his opaque skin and strong voice and the scar on his cheek, with the same happy enthusiasm, the same smile, the same inexplicable want to be around Ronan that he’s had all this time, even when he was dead, Ronan feels strangely relaxed. Noah really is in a better place. ‘Yeah.’

‘It came from a dream, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Your dream?’ Noah’s expression looks carefully neutral. This isn’t something that’s only occurring to him now, it’s a theory he must have had for a while, that Ronan is like Kavinsky. He’s hesitant to bring it up, but that he does so anyway shows how badly he wants to know.

Ronan can’t speak, mouth dry, but he nods.

‘For a while I thought I did, too, that you dreamt me. But you didn’t. At least not my mind. If you had, I never would have been with Whelk. And we would have met way sooner. And I wouldn’t have an entire family. You don’t have to say anything. I don’t need to know how or why. In fact, I’m sure there’s a reason I don’t know. I’m sure it’s a really good reason.’

Ronan nods again.

‘Just please tell me this car is supposed to belong to me.’ He says it quickly, like he’s making a wish.

‘It is,’ Ronan says, grinning, feeling almost weightless with relief. Ronan pretty much confirmed that he stole Noah’s body out of a dream and instead of being upset or demanding to know what happened to him before, he’s worried about his dumb car.

‘Can I take it for a ride later?’

‘Fuck, Noah.’ He’s so happy, like he’s never been before. He kind of wants to punch himself in the face. ‘It’s your car, you can set it on fire for all I care.’

Noah levels him with something that should be a glare, but comes off as a really cheerful frown. ‘Don’t even joke about that.’ Then he turns back to the dashboard of his car, leaning into Ronan’s space to look through the CDs in the glove compartment.

‘You pick one to listen to,’ he tells Ronan. ‘I love all of these. I can’t choose.’

‘The one that’s already in the CD-player,’ Ronan says quietly and Noah’s face lights up when he checks which one it is. Ronan wonders now if that CD was the last one Noah listened to before Whelk killed him, If Ronan kissed Noah to the soundtrack of Noah’s death. He figures it doesn’t matter. Whelk is the only one who remembers Noah’s murder. Ronan is the only one who remembers that kiss.

Noah, here and now, doesn’t remember any of that, and when the music starts playing, he smiles delightedly. It occurs to Ronan for some reason that he doesn’t know if Noah has had any gelato since coming back to life. He should make sure, later, that Noah has gone for gelato, and that he’s had a twenty minute nap after drinking coffee, but right now there’s another thing Ronan should make sure of, another thing Noah wanted to do once he was alive again.

Ronan leans in and before he closes his eyes and meets Noah’s lips, he sees Noah, grinning happily, feels Noah’s hand come to rest against the side of his neck and he knows this won’t be the last time they kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> Some Fun Facts:
> 
> \- I actually wanted to write a fic in which Noah came back to life and everyone remembered him except Ronan and it would be super angsty and Ronan got to be angry all the time, but this happened instead. Can't say I mind.
> 
> \- Noah actually got the Travis Barker hoodie from Whelk's, not from his own house. He left it at Whelk's a couple of days before he died and Whelk gave it back to him after he came back as a ghost. Speaking of which, Noah hanging out at Whelk's for seven years and probably mostly forgiving him is the kind of angsty shit I like to think about at night.
> 
> \- The purple dream thing Noah got from Kavinsky is meant to help him fall asleep and wake up more easily with noises and lights. He's super proud of himself for getting Kavinsky to dream increasingly nice things instead of it always dreaming selfish or destructive stuff. I sort of wanted to get further into Noah and K's weird friendship, but I couldn't really from Ronan's perspective. I love the idea of Noah being friends with him and the Dream Pack, though.
> 
> \- (Ronan has spent several minutes at random moments while seeing Noah in school looking at Noah's crotch while blushing violently to make sure he really didn't forget to dream his dick. What? He's just being thorough.)
> 
> \- Noah dresses as a ghost for a Halloween party once and doesn't get why the Gangsey keeps looking all sad and excusing themselves at random moments to go sniffle in the bathroom.
> 
> \- The title is from Reborn by Kids See Ghosts. Both the name of the song and the name of the collab are very perfect.
> 
> \- I'm super happy you read this fic, I hope you liked it! If you did, let me know in a comment, it will make me smile and I'll send you a super awkward but enthusicastic reply.


End file.
